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[Back to index of July/August articles] Episcopalians offer Bible-based defense of gay bishop By Jim Naughton A delegation from the Episcopal Church drew on the early church’s struggle over the inclusion of Gentiles to present a Bible-based rationale for including gays and lesbians in all orders of Christian ministry at a much-anticipated meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council last month in Nottingham, England. The ACC is the principal consultative body of the Anglican Communion, and one of the four so-called “instruments of unity” that guide the loosely-structured communion. To Set Our Hope on Christ: A Response to the Invitation of Windsor Report Paragraph 135, was prepared at the request of Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold by a group of seven theologians and a historian. The panel included the Rev. Michael Battle, the Rev. Katherine Grieb and Timothy Sedgwick, all faculty members at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. The document is available online at www.edow.org (direct link: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/ToSetOurHopeOnChrist.pdf) and in booklet form from www.episcopalbookstore.org (direct link click here). The paper lays out scriptural, historical and ecclesiological rationale for the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the sacramental life of the church, leaning heavily on a lengthy exegesis of passages in Acts 10-15. Those passages describe the Apostle Peter’s decision to eat with and baptize the family of Cornelius, a Gentile believer. Peter’s actions seem to fly in the face of Scripture and tradition, the paper said. “The rest of the Church rightly called Peter and his companions to give an account of their experiences with the Gentiles and to describe the work of the Spirit among them. It was only after Peter told the story of how he had been led by the Spirit, how he had perceived God’s grace upon Cornelius and the others, how the Holy Spirit had clearly fallen upon them, and that this was why he went ahead with the Baptism, that the rest of the Church was ready to consider the matter in greater detail. They did not automatically say Peter could do whatever he wanted.” “The point of these accounts in Acts is that a particular part of the Church (Peter and friends) has an experience of the Spirit that prompts them to question and reinterpret what they would previously have seen as a clear commandment of Scripture, not to associate with a particular group of people who were considered unclean,” the paper said. The paper also included a strong defense of the local election of bishops—another contested point in the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay man in a monogamous relationship, as Bishop of New Hampshire. “Discerning a candidate’s capacity to lead the flock of Christ into Christ’s own holiness is, because of the particular needs and conditions of every local community, the necessary task of the local community under the guidance of God the Holy Spirit,” the paper said. “[I]t is the testimony of the people of God in New Hampshire and of the bishops and deputies consenting from the wider Church that this has been authentically accomplished in their recent election of a bishop.” The Anglican Church of Canada also presented a defense of the decision by the Diocese of New Westminster to bless same-sex relationship. Canadian Primate Andrew Hutchinson and his delegation stressed that the province as a whole had come to no firm conclusions on this issue. The Canadian’s presentation also included “The St. Michael’s Report,” a document prepared by a panel of theologians to reflect the church’s thinking on the issue of same sex unions. The document noted that procreation is no longer portrayed as the primary end of marriage in Anglican liturgies. “Healthy, heterosexual Anglican couples may, and some do, decide not to have children. Such relationships bear fruit in community service, Christian ministries and the pursuit of holiness,” the report said. “The question that remains is whether the lack of complementarity of gender in same-sex unions can prevent such a couple from being a means of grace, experiencing spiritual growth and participating in the life of God.” Following presentations by the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada, the ACC passed two resolutions, one which initiates a “listening process” on the issue of human sexuality and another requesting that the two churches withdraw their members from the ACC’s Standing Committee and its Inter-Anglican Finance and Administration Committee until the next Lambeth Conference in 2008. The votes were taken during a two-hour session closed to observers, guests and media. The request to the two churches passed 30-28 with four abstentions. The U.S. and Canadian churches, which have a combined six votes, did not cast ballots because they had agreed to a request from the Primates of the Communion to curtail their participation in the ACC until the next Lambeth Conference. The six members from the U.S. and Canada attended the meeting as observers, and in that capacity were not eligible to stand for election to the committees from which it was requested that they withdraw. “The vote, which was contingent on the absence of the six votes of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada reveals a divide within the membership of the ACC,” said Griswold. “I very much hope that the listening process now mandated by the ACC will be one step in healing this divide. I also hope that the report submitted by the Episcopal Church to the members of the ACC, “To Set Our Hope on Christ,” will be a useful contribution to that process. “The work and mission of the Anglican Communion is carried out largely through international commissions and networks in which the Episcopal Church continues as a fully active and committed participant. It is through these means and our numerous other relationships focused on mission to our hurting world that we will, with God’s grace, find our way forward.” Contact Jim Naughton at jnaughton@edow.org [Back to index of July/August articles]
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